Convergence
by dragonwire
Summary: Kenny, and Kyle, and moments that don't really mean anything. KxK.
1. Prologue: Fall, Senior Year

Kenny was...

There weren't really words for it, and Kyle wasn't sure when he'd started trying to find them. Somewhere along the line Kenny had stopped being the weird quiet one and started being something else. Something bright and dark with shadows under his eyes, something that moved like a caged animal, shoulders bunched up like he might pounce or maybe run, and even he didn't know which it would be. Something improbably, impossibly good-natured and gentle in his wild way; something with eyes that flashed like he actually cared about what you were saying no matter how stupid it was. He'd keep fighting, had always kept fighting, despite everything life and fate and all that jazz had thrown at him. Even when he was little, he'd done his best to appear...normal. The closer you got, though, the more you could see the shining wild parts of him underneath that veneer of just-like-everyone-else, that indefinable something that never let you go.

Maybe that's why there had never really been anyone else for Kyle.

They'd started hanging out a lot more the summer before eleventh grade. Kyle had learned a lot that summer, like how to jump start an engine and what stuff scavenged out of the back of the pantry would make you puke and that Kenny was really, really charismatic when you got him talking. He was just so warm and animated that Kyle could happily spend hours just listening to Kenny talk, watching his extravagant gestures and soaking in the weird magnetism that was Kenny. That was also about when Kyle realized he might like guys. One guy, anyway.

He'd not thought about it much before. Well, obviously he'd thought about it in an abstract, curious way, especially when Stan got his vomit reflex under control once and for all and started seriously going with Wendy instead of that off-and-on thing they'd been doing for a while. But he wasn't the kind to get those transient crushes that seemed to saturate every other human being's life, so he figured it probably wasn't a big deal. He'd overlooked the problematic detail that when he fell for someone, he fell hard. And that was why he could feel liking Kenny as a physical pain, a dull roar that made all else muted in comparison.

It was both unpleasant and intoxicating, the inclinations Kyle wrapped up tight and secret throughout the last two years of high school. He wasn't even sure if he hated them or not. On the one hand, it was a constant effort to move and speak as though nothing were amiss; on the other, it was exhilarating just being in the same room as Kenny and striving to see underneath the hood, metaphorically speaking.

Something else he discovered was that Kenny wasn't stupid. Despite the best efforts of Mr. Garrison, Kenny was quietly setting the curve in math class. He was in the same Calculus class as Kyle and Stan, but he seemed to pick up the information effortlessly. It almost made Kyle hate him, sometimes, when Kyle would stay up all night studying and Kenny would waltz in and Kyle _knew _he hadn't so much as looked at the textbooks--and then they'd get the same grade. It also, weirdly, made him kind of hot.

Still, Kenny's intelligence didn't mean he got good grades. He'd...go away, still, sometimes. Not as often as when they were younger and noticed it less, but he usually managed to miss at least one major test per semester. Kyle didn't think anybody else saw it, but there was a certain tightness to Kenny's jaw when he missed something important. He held himself differently, like he'd fucked up somehow and wasn't sure if anyone had realized it yet. Like the time Kyle was teching the school play, and when he slipped out of the after-party he'd found Kenny waiting in the shadows, hood obscuring his face, shoulders tight and frustrated. He hadn't said anything, but Kyle thought he understood. It was probably the same with Stan's games, although Kyle wouldn't know because he'd been going to fewer and fewer. It was just...they took up a lot of time, and the outcome was always the same. At first, he'd only missed games for _really good_ reasons. And then the reasons started getting less valid, and more along the lines of 'I don't really want to go.'

It wasn't like Stan minded. He'd said he didn't mind, so it must have been okay. Clyde and Craig and Token all went, so it wasn't like Kyle would be missed.

Besides, they still hung out pretty much every day. They'd kept up the ritual of traveling to and from school together, at least. Sometimes Kyle thought it was a metaphor for the transition between academic and personal lives, or maybe outer lives and inner lives. He'd said so, once, and Cartman had called him a whiny pussy Jew bitch vagina-face. Most of the time, while waiting for Stan to get out of practice so he could give them all rides in his beat-up car, he and Kenny and Cartman would be behind the bleachers, talking yet again about why they were waiting for stupid Stan and his stupid football friends anyway. Cartman would be playing some video game or other, pudgy fingers pounding at the buttons. Kenny would be smoking, and Kyle would alternate between underlining important points in his textbook and lecturing Kenny about smoking. He thought it probably wouldn't make a difference whether Kenny smoked or not, but he wasn't exactly sure how the mechanics of everything worked, and had never asked. So to be on the safe side, he nagged.

Sometimes Kyle wondered how many times Kenny had gone when they weren't there. Had he ever smothered himself in his sleep? Did he ever watch the light fade alone, wondering where Kyle and Stan were, wondering if they'd acknowledge him anyway? Fuck, when he was ten he'd never thought like this. Things were pretty clear. There were bastards, there was Kenny, and there were those in between just trying to get by. Now they didn't even say a word when _that thing_ in its horrible and varied forms happened. They just ignored it and it went away. Because in South Park, things always go back to normal, swinging back onto a predestined path to whatever the future held.

Why all of this made Kyle want to fuck Kenny really, really badly he didn't know. It had something to do with forcing Kenny into reality, mapping out his body so intimately that Kenny would have no choice but to stay, tying him to the cold and dreadful light. It also maybe had something to do with getting close to that spark in Kenny's eyes and the tilt of his smile, being absorbed into his maniac glow and seeing him _want_ badly enough to need.

Of course, all of this was ultimately irrelevant. He could never, ever say anything; never try for more than stolen glances and sort-of-accidental brief touches that burned right through to the marrow, flames licking through his veins. Kenny was not allowed. Some part of Kyle liked it that way, liked it static and safe the way he pushed everything so deep down nobody could ever see. The knowledge that he would never betray his own secret grounded him. There was a peace in knowing that his--whatever, the boy he had quietly and inexorably fallen for so deeply that Kenny was the very foundation of his world, would always be an unattainable dream.

He did dream, somewhat more literally, about Kenny. In fact, it was rare that he had a dream without Kenny somewhere in it. He remembered this one dream a lot, where Kenny was wrapped up in his hoodie, standing too close to Kyle, and put a knife in dream-Kyle's hand and Kyle watched himself, with surgical precision, eviscerate Kenny alive or maybe dead. It was hard to tell with Kenny. But the parka covered his face and he just stood there, watching strange and inhuman organs float to the ground like dead leaves.

Kyle knew he was sort of a bastard. Not like Cartman, who seemed to have none of the ethical boundaries that normal people had; it wasn't so much that he was particularly evil, he just didn't have...brakes. But Kyle knew better, was supposed to know better, and still he stood there cold and blank when bad things happened, even to himself. He could fake empathy with the best of them, and he could remember a time when he really did care about making things right so passionately that it felt like holy fire surging through him. There had to have been some sort of transition between back then and...well, now, but Kyle wasn't sure when or how or why it was. He could be cruel without meaning it, then surprised when other people minded.

Of course, Kenny never minded. At least, he never said if he did. Kyle was grateful for that. Kenny'd listen to Kyle ramble on and on, actually listening, and somehow made whatever Kyle said more noble. Better. Just by smiling at it in that oddly gentle way of his, or interjecting a dirty joke, which for some reason had the same effect. He'd been there the night Kyle quietly lost his faith.

It was a subtle, inexorable process. The more Kyle asked questions, the further he'd had to stretch his faith to fit with his sense of ethics and the books his mother tried to keep him from reading, the more thinking he did, the harder it was to reconcile what he could rationalize and what he could not. Something had to break. And then, one night, it did. Kenny was sitting across a Monopoly board from him, half-sprawled on the floor, chewing his sleeve thoughtfully as he tried to decide whether or not to buy Boardwalk. Kyle was just--looking at him, and stopped believing in G-d. He sometimes wrote the name out, for the novelty, afterwards. When he closed his eyes he thought about writing the name into Kenny's skin and seeing if it would stick. It seemed entirely possible that the letters would slide off, evaporate, maybe dissolve like ash into the breeze.

He hadn't told anyone, least of all Kenny. He still exploded in a fury when Cartman aimed his unending vitriol towards Jews; he still went through all the motions with his family, still kept more or less kosher, still let his strings be pulled by habit and convenience. It wasn't as if he stopped being Jewish, stopped feeling the press of thousands of years of history and tradition and suffering on his bones. It was a weight that had always anchored him, but now seemed to feel alien and discordant. Some things still felt holy, and he was starting to think that maybe they could be holy all on their own without a god. Maybe when he was younger he would have tried to explain himself, made some kind of stand, but now...it was like he was fractured, like he'd been flayed by a prism, and he was all right with trying to fit himself around the world rather than changing the world to fit him. Maybe that was why he hadn't tried to pursue Kenny more actively--besides the fact that it was hopeless. It was just easier to pretend like he was the kind of person who would do the right thing, a good kind of person, the kind who wasn't horribly in love with Kenny.

It had occurred to him once or twice that it might be possible to be a good person, or at least a different person, and want Kenny. While he granted this possibility, Kyle's obsession with Kenny was somehow part of every other dirty little secret in his life. All his dark places were wrapped up in an orange parka, chain-smoking and pretending not to crave the world's approval.

That was one of the things that hadn't changed about Kenny. Well, the pretending not to care was relatively new--he'd been more open, more straightforward when they were younger. They all had, without the unwanted subtleties and confusions of experience pressing down on their limbs. Now there were layers and layers of Kenny, folded up like origami. It had taken a while for Kyle to unpack that hunger in him. It was something that he had discovered, that Kenny was always hungry for--something. Kyle wasn't quite sure what. It wasn't attention he wanted, exactly, it was more like comfort. Validation. Assurance, reassurance, acceptance. Kyle could run through his internal thesaurus and still not quite describe the way in which Kenny hesitated so slightly before following the rest of the group, as if he wasn't sure it was okay for him to follow. The way in which something in Kenny's eyes flashed warm and desperately grateful every time his name was spoken kindly. The way Kenny held himself carefully in a crowd of friends, shoulders a little too tight, glancing into dark corners.

It was all part of the way Kenny seemed to live slightly off-kilter with the rest of the world. Kyle was endlessly fascinated with that disconnect: all the small ways Kenny didn't quite fit into the spaces around him. Maybe that was why he kept--going away. The world knew Kenny didn't quite fit, and kept trying to spit him out. Why Kenny kept trying, kept coming back, Kyle couldn't say. Kyle was, of course, profoundly grateful. A life without Kenny somewhere in it was distinctly unappealing.

That was probably why Kyle kept trying to keep Kenny. It was a compulsion, the way he'd use every means at his disposal short of actual physical restraint to make Kenny stay longer with the living, with Kyle. Of course, it never seemed to make a difference, and Kyle felt like screaming every time they found Kenny with his eyes empty and gray and half-lidded, usually mangled almost beyond recognition, leeching color from the air. It was intolerable, and yet everyone around him seemed to tolerate it. It was getting to the point where Kyle had to clench his fists until his nails left marks that would last for days every time Kenny walked away, just to keep himself from reaching out, clutching at Kenny, wrapping Kenny up into a neat little packet and keeping him forever. Cutting out his organs and putting them into jars. Watching Kenny's heart beat glowing in glass, kneeling over Kenny and tracing the leylines of his body. Catching each stray thought on his tongue like forbidden Christmas snow and returning them one by one, still cold-melting in his mouth, to Kenny's mind.

These were probably wrong thoughts to have. But you bastards, us bastards, it really wasn't all that different.

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* * *

A/N:

So this is the story I wanted to write about a third of the way through Ink. Started out as a random paragraph at the bottom of the Ink doc that I wrote for no reason whatsoever, and I kept adding to it because stories are very easy to start. And then of course I had half a story and nowhere to go with it. I think the front half of my stories tend to be considerably better than the back halves, because I keep having new stories I want to write partway through. In fact, I wrote the first few chapters within a couple weeks, and then abandoned it for about six months. Now that I've started writing again, I figured I'd better start posting.

Just so you know, chapters will get shorter and shorter. This is both a stylistic choice and an excuse to get lazier with endings.

Maybe this isn't the place for it, but some notes on Ink: yeah, you all were totally right, it finished way too abruptly. That was in part due to this story and school absorbing all my attention and in part due to the fact that I really suck at endings. Trying to get better, but you know. It's a process. I'm glad so many of you thought they seemed canonish; I tend to be pretty cynical about romance but not about love, which makes for a weird combination. And to fandom newbies, yeah, we've all been there.


	2. Chapter 1: Winter, Senior Year

(It's bright and--glowy, or something, and Kenny's laughing. Kyle thinks it's a really pretty sound. Pretty like the dress he's wearing, wherever it's from. Cartman didn't say. But Kyle's a man of honor for some reason and he lost the bet and now he's had like a million beers to try and forget that he's wearing fucking pantyhose, shit, somebody pass him another Corona. Not that anyone's letting him forget, especially not Kenny and his stupid leer and stupid comments. Stan's eyes keep sliding away whenever Stan tries to look at him, and Kyle figures Wendy will chew him out later for being weird about gender-normative fuck-all. God. Whatever.)

* * *

"Did you mean it?"

Kyle wasn't looking at him, was staring slightly to his right, unfocused and shivering in the cold. He was wearing that fucking stupid dress, the ribbon at his throat bedraggled and lopsided, his hands crumpling the edge of that stupid fluffy skirt as they opened and closed compulsively. Anyone passing by would see a girl all dressed up, red curls shining in the light from the doorway, waist cinched tight, swaying a little in her pumps, but all Kenny saw was the weird desperate look in his eyes, the vicious slant to his mouth, the defensive stance he'd adopted.

Kenny shook himself out of shock and into some semblance of functionality. "What?"

"That--those things you said. When you said you'd...did you mean it?"

"You're drunk." Kenny tried to make his voice soothing, tried to calm Kyle down back into normalcy.

"Didn't answer my question."

"Come on, sleep it off. Your folks will kill you if you go home like this." He took Kyle's arm, tried to guide him out of the cold, but Kyle was suddenly way too close, fingertips catching in the pockets of his jeans, leaning in until Kenny could make out the low lights in his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm drunk. That's my excuse. But you gotta answer my question."

"No, I don't. Come on, there's a couch over there..."

"You gotta. It's the rules."

"There are no rules, Kyle. Trust me, you'll agree when you get tomorrow's hangover."

Kyle laughed, and the sound was strange and dark in the yellow light. "Yeah...no rules."

Somehow he'd backed Kenny up against the wall, and Kenny could hear his own too-loud breathing in the small space between them. He caught a brief glimpse of a curling smile before Kyle caught his mouth in a kiss, tongue darting out shamelessly and a little sloppily, tasting mostly of secondhand beer and a hint of that fruity pink margarita Cartman had forced on him.

Kenny was confused and kind of really turned on and stood blinking helplessly when Kyle pulled away, not too far. "It'll be easy," Kyle said, looking away. "Just pretend I'm a girl."

I don't need to, I couldn't even if I tried, you're _so drunk_, Kenny wanted to say. Because Kyle was always and would always be only and entirely Kyle; there was no room for anything else to fit in the Kyle-shaped space in Kenny's consciousness.

"We...shouldn't," Kenny managed, although it was getting more difficult to think of reasons why not with every passing moment.

"You said. No rules." Somehow Kenny got the feeling that there were two different thoughts there, but he couldn't follow them. Kyle was just standing there as if it were normal to be a few inches away from your best friend, looking determined and a little scared in skirts and makeup.

"You know what I meant."

"I dont. 'S why I'm asking."

Kyle was too close, way too close, and Kenny was breathless with all this too-closeness.

"Come on," breathed Kyle, mouth brushing Kenny's ear; "I want this."

Kenny closed his eyes, hating himself. "I don't. Not like this."

It was suddenly much colder; Kyle was five feet away, staring at him with an unreadable expression.

"Shit. Kyle, look, just--come on, you can use my bed. I'll take the couch."

Kyle turned and flounced off without a word or glance.

"Promise you'll drink some water," Kenny called after him.

//

Morning crawled through the windows with a grim inevitability.

Kenny enjoyed a brief moment of sleep-addled peace before recollection took hold. Fuck. He threw an arm over his eyes in a futile attempt to block out any kind of responsibility. Because that was the thing; he was, sort of, in the weirdest kind of way, responsible for Kyle. It was...hard to explain, even to himself. But Kyle had always fought for him in so many little ways, gave him food and shelter when he needed to escape, and Kyle still needed a companionship that Stan and definitely Cartman weren't providing. Kenny was a sorry second best, but he had a responsibility.

He lay still, listening; there was no sound from the bedroom. Probably just as well. Somehow, Kenny managed to get his feet on the floor and into the kitchen. His hands sought out the coffeemaker automatically, going through the familiar routine without the intervention of his brain.

_(Water.)_

It had been frankly shocking how badly Kenny had wanted to take advantage of Kyle the other night. He'd never thought of himself as that guy, not since the beginning of high school and girl after girl with painted mouths and short skirts. Back then, it had been pretty much everything he thought about--how to coax the next girl out of her tight halter top, chasing that _something_, that high he could almost get through sex, that connection with another living being.

_(Filter.)  
_

Kenny wasn't sure when he'd gotten sick of chasing that elusive satisfaction. It had happened slowly, inexorably; by the end of eleventh grade, he was done. Realized that there was never going to be a girl who wasn't all sharp edges and cruelty, sideways looks under kohl-heavy eyelids and using him as much as he was using her. Accepted that here, like in all other areas, life had fucked him over again and again. No, that wasn't fair; he'd been lucky in a lot of ways, and the best and brightest of those ways was Kyle Broflovski.

_(Coffee grounds.)  
_

That was probably why he'd reacted that way when Kyle had come on to him. What with the confusion, and the dress, and--no.

Kyle flicked the coffeemaker on and rested his forehead against a cupboard door. He wasn't being honest with himself. The dizzying heat and press of Kyle's mouth and fingers and hips had nothing to do with what he was wearing. Well, okay, maybe the dark blue satin stretched over Kyle's skin made Kenny's pulse stutter a little, but that was nothing compared to the fact that it was _Kyle_. Even now, a miserable desire twisted quietly in his ribcage, far too familiar to be new.

It was just that--well, Kyle. He worried too much, he tried too hard, his mind spiraled off into galaxies unknown and forgot to take his body along, and the smiles he occasionally turned on Kenny were blindingly and desperately dear. Kenny gathered every fond look to himself, knowing all too well that Kyle wasn't his to keep. Nonetheless, he did his best to take care of Kyle and protect him from the rough edges of the world. Kyle careened too wildly through life, driven by hate and love and hope and despair; there was no room for moderation when he threw himself fully into every emotion. It wasn't that he was self-centered so much as he was consumed by the need to follow his overeager heart. Kenny knew what caring too much could do, and was determined to see that Kyle came out of it all right.

An embarrassed cough broke into his reverie. Kyle was standing uneasily at the kitchen doorway, shifting a little from one foot to the other.

"I, uh. Borrowed your parka. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, of course." Kenny smiled, trying desperately to be casual, not to send Kyle fleeing out the door.

The threadbare orange parka wasn't quite long enough to cover the hem of Kyle's skirt, and though he'd taken off his shoes and hairband, he'd forgotten about the ribbon around his neck. He looked pieced-together, battered and fragile and beautiful.

"About...last night. I just wanted to say thanks. You know. For not--" he started to lift his hand in some vague gesture, then let it drop. "Yeah. For everything."

It was an incredibly awkward moment, and Kenny was almost glad when a cast-iron pot he didn't remember putting on a high shelf toppled onto his head.

* * *

(Kyle stared at the fading light in Kenny's eyes, hating the world. Kenny's body was still on the floor in a shallow spreading puddle of blood, and Kyle held back the familiar urge to vomit.  
He'd never touched Kenny's body. Well, obviously he'd come into contact with Kenny plenty of times in the normal course of growing up in each other's pockets, but never...afterwards. Sometimes he thought that if he pretended everything was okay, if he shut his eyes and ears and hands, it would stop happening. It hadn't stopped happening, but he wasn't about to jinx it now. He turned around and walked out the door of Kenny's empty house, each step a faithless prayer.

He really, really didn't want to go home. Didn't want to fend off unanswerable questions, didn't want to be reminded that life went on outside this illusory stasis. Walking along the road like this, he could pretend he didn't have a destination. He could pretend like maybe he was going to walk forever, bare toes splaying against the dirt, skirt sliding faintly against his skin, on and on and on through a world without Kenny. The thought made him viciously satisfied until he realized he was crying.)

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* * *

A/N: Much less foggy and navelgazey this time. Well, a bit less, at least. I quite like this 'bookends' format; whenever I'm writing a scene from one POV, I have to fight the urge to go "Yes, but what did the other person think? What was going through hir head at the time?" This format lets me indulge that urge without sacrificing too much coherency.

Also, writing dialogue for drunk people is super awkward. See, I know how it generally sounds, but it looks so odd when it's on the screen. So I compensate in various little ways while I'm writing it down, and then when I sound it out in my head it doesn't sound right. And round and round I go...

Again, these chapters are going to get shorter and shorter. There are technically three more that I have planned out, but I'll probably post the last two at the same time.


	3. Chapter 2: Fall, Freshman Year

(The day Kyle left for college, Kenny had to work an eight-hour shift. He heard, afterwards, that Stan had started crying while seeing Kyle off; he wasn't sure whether or not to believe it, given that Cartman was his source, but it seemed plausible enough. A week later, Stan left for Colorado State, and Kenny helped him load up his car. Just before he drove off, Stan hesitated, then looked up at Kenny through the open window. He looked very young, and very tired.

"We'll be back soon, dude. You'll see."

Kenny wasn't sure what it was that he was supposed to see, but he smiled and waved as Stan's Corolla cruised out of South Park. On his way home, he pulled his hood tight around his face and folded his arms around his body, trying to keep out the cold. A car hit him on the street outside his house.)

* * *

It had only been a few months, really. Kyle kept telling himself that. It was only a few months ago that his parents dropped him off at the airport and made him promise to call. He hadn't, but he'd picked up his phone when they called often enough that it probably counted.  
He'd been able to avoid coming home over Thanksgiving break, citing homework and papers and whatever else he could think of, but he couldn't exactly avoid South Park between semesters. So December saw him staring out the window of Economy Class, blinking against the brightness of the sun and dreading the pilot's smooth, comforting voice telling the flight attendants to prepare for landing.  
The town felt hideously familiar on his skin. After the thrilling banality of classes and books and people who actually fucking understood what he was talking about most of the time, he was a little ashamed of how immediate the sensation of _home_ flooded through him at the sight and sound and smell of those familiar streets. Like it or not, South Park meant home and family and a thousand places to spark childhood memories and a searing loneliness that shook him to pieces.  
He'd finally gotten away from his parents and their small mechanisms of control that should have been routine but now drew his shoulderblades up tight, made it difficult to force courtesy between his teeth. It wasn't as if they were being malicious, but he'd gotten used to answering to himself pretty quickly. Their attempts at dominance were a constant irritation.  
He wandered into a gas station store and froze mid-step. He'd--Jesus, it wasn't like he hadn't known that college wasn't in Kenny's future, but. It was just. Everything he'd managed to push below conscious thought saturated his mind, the dial turned way up on messy blond hair and too-thin hands and a smile you could hang your heart on. Everything he'd ever wanted was flipping through a magazine behind a gas station counter, looking half-asleep.

It wasn't like he couldn't remember in painful detail exactly how fucked-up he'd been about Kenny—and apparently still was. Every ounce of equilibrium he'd fought tooth and nail for drained out of him, leaving him dizzy and vaguely sick. He stumbled backwards out the door and wedged his body between a vending machine and the stained and crumbling wall, fighting for breath. He'd thought he was over this, he really had. But Kenny had always burned away all his defenses.

He had to go back in there. There really wasn't any other option. It would be fine, though, he could be cool about this. He'd outgrown a lot of his weird emo teenage angst, he thought, and this would be--cathartic. Or something. By this point, he wasn't really sure where the line was between rationalization and reasoning.

He wasn't ready, he'd never be ready, but he forced himself back together and back into a kind of sanity, puhing his the snarls and chaos of his mind far under the surface until he could smile like nothing mattered.

As he stepped through the doors a second time, Kenny glanced up at him and grinned, spontaneous and delighted, and Kyle knew bone-deep that he wasn't done with this yet.

* * *

(When he looked up to see Kyle in the door, Kenny'd almost been prepared to see a totally different person, with big-city shine or something. But Kyle looked the same as ever, a little undersized, messy red hair that wouldn't quite fit under a hat, beat-up bomber jacket and all. If Chicago had left its traces on Kyle, it was somewhere Kenny couldn't see. He wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing; Kyle was too, too familiar like this.

They made small talk, Kyle's fingertips running back and forth over the edge of the counter, the noises of the street slow and far away; eventually Kyle glanced down at his watch and left. Afterwards, Kenny couldn't remember a single thing either of them had said.

He hoped he'd said _Hello, I missed you._)

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* * *

A/N: Kyle is way too dramatic. Takes things much too personally. Also, word to the college student: grad school applications are the devil, start them your junior year or they will destroy your soul.

I know it's short. I did warn you. Next chapters should be up within a few days.


	4. Chapter 3: Winter, Freshman Year

"Kyle, I'm thinking about moving out."

Kenny was staring at the ceiling; he could feel the rough floorboards in his bedroom through his hoodie, and thought _It's probably time to get a new one_. He was running his thumb over his lighter, flicking it on and off.

"Well, yeah, I mean--good for you. You can't stay with your parents forever." Kyle was leafing through some textbook, Kenny didn't even know what kind of person read textbooks on their spring break.

"No, I mean. Out of South Park."

There was a silence, and Kenny craned his neck to look at the other boy. Kyle was sitting very, very still, and only the whiteness of his fingertips where they pressed against his book indicated that he'd heard Kenny at all.

The pause seemed to stretch and fill the air, hanging in the March sunlight. Although Kenny had no idea what he was hoping for or expecting from Kyle, his nerves seemed to be jumping out of his skin, his breath shallow and uneven.

When Kyle finally spoke, he sounded a million miles away. "Yeah, you don't want to be stuck here forever."

* * *

Kyle had never really thought of Kenny as the wandering type, all Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a 21st century Huck Finn. But there he was, loading his duffel bag into the passenger seat of his geriatric pickup truck. In a few minutes he'd be gone.

Kenny shut the door and Kyle fought a rising panic attack. Kenny had always just...been there. Always. It didn't even matter what happened to him, he'd be there waiting perfect and suspended in his own separate orbit, returning again and again to a place where Kyle could reach out and be sure of him. Kenny meant forever, meant safety. Kyle pondered for an instant if South Park could handle Kenny's loss--whether it would fracture under the strain, streets running with hurt and hate--until he realized 'South Park' might be a metaphor, and he wasn't about to go down that road.

Kenny was looking at him through that messy blond tangle with an inscrutable expression. Kyle had just enough time to wonder if he should say something when Kenny stepped forward quickly, warm and close, and kissed him.

"For luck," he said, then hopped into the truck and drove off.

"You're the one who," said Kyle to the tire tracks. "Luck. Needs it, or. Shit."

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* * *

A/N: Sorry it took so long, for so little...just finished a killer bio final, and now I have to go scrape my brains out with a spoon.


	5. Chapter 4: Fall, Sophomore Year

Kyle knocked once, and only once, on the door right beneath the cracked and peeling painted apartment number. It was this or nothing, or maybe this and nothing. But there had been something back home, he was sure of that, and for once Kyle wasn't fighting against every shadow South Park had to offer. It was, after all this time, remarkably effortless to balance here in the breath between impossibility and banality. _ You can take the boy out of South Park_, he thought as the door swung open, and left the thought at that.

"Hi," said Kenny, leaning against his doorframe. Somewhere behind him, a kettle began to whistle.

Kyle grinned, stepping closer. "You going to let me in?"

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* * *

A/N: The end. This was kind of a self-indulgent fic...I essentially wrote what I wanted to write and passed it off as artsy. Nonetheless, I hope you've enjoyed it; thanks for all the kind words, I really do appreciate each comment. :)


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